Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Should we worry about income gaps within or between countries?

Dani Rodrik 2nd October 2019

The rise of populist nationalism throughout the west has been fuelled partly by a clash between the objectives of equity in rich countries and higher living standards in poor countries.

income gaps

At the beginning of classes every autumn, I tease my students with the following question: is it better to be poor in a rich country or rich in a poor country? The question typically invites considerable and inconclusive debate. But we can devise a more structured and limited version of the question, for which there is a definitive answer.

Let’s narrow the focus to incomes and assume that people care only about their own consumption levels (disregarding inequality and other social conditions). ‘Rich’ and ‘poor’ are those in the top and bottom 5 per cent of the income distribution, respectively. In a typical rich country, the poorest 5 per cent of the population receive around 1 per cent of national income. Data are a lot sparser for poor countries, but it would not be too much off the mark to assume that the richest 5 per cent there receive 25 per cent of national income. 

Similarly, let’s assume that rich and poor countries are those in the top and bottom 5 per cent of all countries, ranked by per capita income. In a typical poor country (such as Liberia or Niger), that is around $1,000, compared with $65,000 in a typical rich country (say, Switzerland or Norway). (These incomes are adjusted for cost-of-living, or purchasing-power, differentials so that they can be directly compared.)

Now, we can calculate that a rich person in a poor country has an income of $5,000 ($1,000 x 0.25 x 20) while a poor person in a rich country earns $13,000 ($65,000 x 0.01 x 20). Measured by material living standards, a poor person in a rich country is more than twice as well off as a rich person in a poor country.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

This result surprises my students; most of them expect the reverse to be true. When they think of wealthy individuals in poor countries, they imagine tycoons living in mansions with a retinue of servants and a fleet of expensive cars. But while such individuals certainly exist, a representative of the top 5 per cent in very poor countries is likely to be a mid-level government bureaucrat.

‘Great divergence’

The larger point of this comparison is to underscore the importance of income differences across countries, relative to inequalities within countries. At the dawn of modern economic growth, before the Industrial Revolution, global inequality derived almost exclusively from inequality within countries. Income gaps between Europe and poorer parts of the world were small. But as the west developed in the 19th century, the world economy underwent a ‘great divergence’ between the industrial core and the primary-goods-producing periphery. During much of the postwar period, income gaps between rich and poor countries accounted for the greater part of global inequality.

From the late 1980s on, two trends began to alter this picture. First, led by China, many parts of the lagging regions began to experience substantially faster economic growth than the world’s rich countries. For the first time in history, the typical developing-country resident was getting richer at a faster pace than his or her counterparts in Europe and north America.

Secondly, inequalities began to increase in many advanced economies, especially those with less-regulated labour markets and weak social protections. The rise in inequality in the United States has been so sharp that it is no longer clear that the standard of living of the American ‘poor’ is higher than that of the ‘rich’ in the poorest countries (with rich and poor defined as above).

These two trends went in offsetting directions in terms of overall global inequality—one decreased it while the other increased it. But they have both raised the share of within-country inequality in the total, reversing an uninterrupted trend observed since the 19th century.

Given patchy data, we cannot be certain about the respective shares of within- and between-country inequality in today’s world economy. But in an unpublished paper based on data from the World Inequality Database, Lucas Chancel of the Paris School of Economics estimates that as much as three-quarters of current global inequality may be due to within-country inequality. Historical estimates by two other French economists, François Bourguignon and Christian Morrison, suggest that within-country inequality has not loomed so large since the late 19th century.

Policy priorities

These estimates, if correct, suggest that the world economy has crossed an important threshold, requiring us to revisit policy priorities. For a long time, economists like me have been telling the world that the most effective way to reduce global income disparities would be to accelerate economic growth in low-income countries. Cosmopolitans in rich countries—typically the wealthy and skilled professionals—could claim to hold the high moral ground when they downplayed the concerns of those complaining about domestic inequality.

But the rise of populist nationalism throughout the west has been fuelled partly by the tension between the objectives of equity in rich countries and higher living standards in poor countries. Advanced economies’ increased trade with low-income countries has contributed to domestic wage inequality. And probably the single best way to raise incomes in the rest of the world would be to allow a massive influx of workers from poor countries into rich countries’ labour markets. That would not be good news for less educated, lower-paid rich-country workers.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Yet advanced-economy policies that emphasise domestic equity need not be harmful to the global poor, even in international trade. Economic policies that lift incomes at the bottom of the labour market and diminish economic insecurity are good both for domestic equity and for the maintenance of a healthy world economy that provides poor economies a chance to develop.

Republication forbidden. Copyright: Project Syndicate 2019 Should we worry about income gaps within or between countries? See also our focus page What is inequality?

Dani Rodrik
Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, is president of the International Economic Association and  author of Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (Princeton University Press).

You are here: Home / Economy / Should we worry about income gaps within or between countries?

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin
central and eastern Europe,unions,recognition Social dialogue in central and eastern EuropeMartin Myant
women soldiers,Ukraine Ukraine war: attitudes changing to women soldiersJennifer Mathers and Anna Kvit
military secrets,World Trade Organization,WTO,NATO,intellectual-property rights Military secrets and the World Trade OrganizationUgo Pagano
energy transition,Europe,wind and solar Europe’s energy transition starts to speed upDave Jones

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube